Villore Sec Ops

Gallente Federation

I don't see why Capsuleers can't just set up merc contracts to attack or defend districts, they put up the money, that way no new money is entering into the system, its just flowing from eve to Dust. And they could put a hard cap for the maximum amount "imposed by concord".

The thing is there has to be an ISK answer to the "why" of the Capsuleer putting up the contract. An Eve pilot isn't going to sink money into Dust corps fighting over districts out of the goodness of his heart.

District control affects FW capture status of the system.

I get Beers' point about the cost of a serious battle, but I suspect most district battles will be happy fun fun time with Zion vs. ScIdama or some other no name carebear corp.

Imperfects

Negative-Feedback

I don't see why Capsuleers can't just set up merc contracts to attack or defend districts, they put up the money, that way no new money is entering into the system, its just flowing from eve to Dust. And they could put a hard cap for the maximum amount "imposed by concord".

The thing is there has to be an ISK answer to the "why" of the Capsuleer putting up the contract. An Eve pilot isn't going to sink money into Dust corps fighting over districts out of the goodness of his heart.

District control affects FW capture status of the system.

I get Beers' point about the cost of a serious battle, but I suspect most district battles will be happy fun fun time with Zion vs. ScIdama or some other no name carebear corp.

Even if both corps are paid 25 mill for a 24v24 match the match is still bad when you add in vehicle/gear costs. Just using the planet being worth 2 bill a month makes district worth about 175 mill a month in isk. At that rate if the owner is attacked and forced to defend 7 times in a month there goes all the value of the district.

its not really about which corp its about any corp

Every mercs life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and died that distinguishes one from another

Forum Warfare

Even if both corps are paid 25 mill for a 24v24 match the match is still bad when you add in vehicle/gear costs. Just using the planet being worth 2 bill a month makes district worth about 175 mill a month in isk. At that rate if the owner is attacked and forced to defend 7 times in a month there goes all the value of the district.

its not really about which corp its about any corp

I'm digging all the logic, Beers, but one question for you:

Are you assuming that every district of every planet will be fought over every month?

Do we even have a rough estimate on the total planets/districts?

From what I remember of my FW days, there were a whole hell of a lot of planets. If there's more than can be reasonably fought over (yes, there will always be hotspots, but speaking macroscopically, some planets will get more attention than others) there's going to be profit in it somewhere.

I imagine that battle hotspots will happen like a roving, incredibly hot spotlight.

I used to own the FAT GAT until this --> [ASCII Art removed - draconian forum overlord CCP Logibro]

Even if both corps are paid 25 mill for a 24v24 match the match is still bad when you add in vehicle/gear costs. Just using the planet being worth 2 bill a month makes district worth about 175 mill a month in isk. At that rate if the owner is attacked and forced to defend 7 times in a month there goes all the value of the district.

its not really about which corp its about any corp

I'm digging all the logic, Beers, but one question for you:

Are you assuming that every district of every planet will be fought over every month?

Do we even have a rough estimate on the total planets/districts?

From what I remember of my FW days, there were a whole hell of a lot of planets. If there's more than can be reasonably fought over (yes, there will always be hotspots, but speaking macroscopically, some planets will get more attention than others) there's going to be profit in it somewhere.

I imagine that battle hotspots will happen like a roving, incredibly hot spotlight.

You bring up really good points.

At the moment its all temperate planets in FW space and each planet is suppose to have 10-14 districts on them (not to mention the rest of lowsec will have dust sov on planets). I assume just like now districts will be able to be attacked when the attacker chooses. Which means you could have tons of corps laying seige to 1 district on 1 planet all in the same day.

I'm one of those eve nerds with all the spreadsheets so I always calculate the time, effort, reward in anything I do. Thus my concern

Every mercs life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and died that distinguishes one from another

I assume just like now districts will be able to be attacked when the attacker chooses. Which means you could have tons of corps laying seige to 1 district on 1 planet all in the same day.

Exactly my thinking. Which lead me to believe that most planets will be profitable most of the time, but when one system starts getting all the fighting, the profitability will drop deep into the negative for a while until the heat is off. That's when DUST bunnies make profit and podders lose it.

Just thought I'd play devil's advocate for a moment.

Though I imagine you're entirely correct that if most people lose profit most of the time, it's bound to fizzle sooner or later, and that if most people are at least mildly profiting, then DUST isn't serving as an ISK sink at all and inflation increases again.

Quote:

I'm one of those eve nerds with all the spreadsheets so I always calculate the time, effort, reward in anything I do. Thus my concern

I was too. Was on the ground floor of the projectile rebalance waging spreadsheet warfare about falloff with Laing a few years ago. There's just something about EVE that logically leads to Excel documents. (Methinks it's the menu interface.)

ED: Just had a thought about isk sinks.

The only way it would work is if paying DUST Mercs to hold a planet is unprofitable, but the consequences of not doing it are so severe that people do it anyway. I image we'd be seeing a whole lot of rage floating around in the void of space in that case, but hey, they're both CCP's games. CCP's servers run on tears.

I used to own the FAT GAT until this --> [ASCII Art removed - draconian forum overlord CCP Logibro]

C C P

C C P Alliance

Been reading this thread and really want to respond. First and foremost thank you for this thread. These types of discussions are really awesome and help us a lot.

You guys make a lot of really valid points about FW corporation battles; unfortunately, or fortunately depending how you look at it, they won't apply to FW battles much longer. One of the design goals we have right now when it comes to battles that are not the instant battles is that the corporation paying for the fight should be the ones owning the district and controlling who gets in.

I am not going to go into much detail here because I and CCP Nullabor are writing a dev blog on it, but I want you guys to know that we agree with a lot of what you have said and are working on a lot of improvements.

I will also note that your estimate for how much a planet should generate is pretty close to what I have listed in my documentation right here... No matter how much a district makes though, we want to encourage people to attack other districts because giant NAP fests are terrible.

Even if both corps are paid 25 mill for a 24v24 match the match is still bad when you add in vehicle/gear costs. Just using the planet being worth 2 bill a month makes district worth about 175 mill a month in isk. At that rate if the owner is attacked and forced to defend 7 times in a month there goes all the value of the district.

its not really about which corp its about any corp

I'm digging all the logic, Beers, but one question for you:

Are you assuming that every district of every planet will be fought over every month?

Do we even have a rough estimate on the total planets/districts?

From what I remember of my FW days, there were a whole hell of a lot of planets. If there's more than can be reasonably fought over (yes, there will always be hotspots, but speaking macroscopically, some planets will get more attention than others) there's going to be profit in it somewhere.

I imagine that battle hotspots will happen like a roving, incredibly hot spotlight.

You bring up really good points.

At the moment its all temperate planets in FW space and each planet is suppose to have 10-14 districts on them (not to mention the rest of lowsec will have dust sov on planets). I assume just like now districts will be able to be attacked when the attacker chooses. Which means you could have tons of corps laying seige to 1 district on 1 planet all in the same day.

I'm one of those eve nerds with all the spreadsheets so I always calculate the time, effort, reward in anything I do. Thus my concern

I don't see why Capsuleers can't just set up merc contracts to attack or defend districts, they put up the money, that way no new money is entering into the system, its just flowing from eve to Dust. And they could put a hard cap for the maximum amount "imposed by concord".

The thing is there has to be an ISK answer to the "why" of the Capsuleer putting up the contract. An Eve pilot isn't going to sink money into Dust corps fighting over districts out of the goodness of his heart.

District control affects FW capture status of the system.

I get Beers' point about the cost of a serious battle, but I suspect most district battles will be happy fun fun time with Zion vs. ScIdama or some other no name carebear corp.

Even if both corps are paid 25 mill for a 24v24 match the match is still bad when you add in vehicle/gear costs. Just using the planet being worth 2 bill a month makes district worth about 175 mill a month in isk. At that rate if the owner is attacked and forced to defend 7 times in a month there goes all the value of the district.

its not really about which corp its about any corp

You guys are assuming, and maybe correctly so based on how things currently work, that corporation battles are only ISK sinks. Nice thing about EVE is the winner gets the losers loot... mmmmm loot.

This suddenly announced lowsec SOV for Dust mercs seems like CCP deciding that FW was too broken for us to even participate in.

ie with the broken state of it Eve side, there isn't enough passion to make Eve FW corps pay us to help them win.

Big problem for everyone.

Or it could be we have different ideas for FW battles. If FW battles and those for control of SOV were identical in all aspects it would be a bit redundant. We want them both to offer something different and to be different than the instant battles. More on this soon.

You have no idea. The number of things we have sat around here saying "well, this should work... I hope..." The things we are doing don't have many other examples to compare to. Even deciding simple things like how many districts there should be, how much they should generate, and those type of things just make any day a very long day.

What The French

This suddenly announced lowsec SOV for Dust mercs seems like CCP deciding that FW was too broken for us to even participate in.

ie with the broken state of it Eve side, there isn't enough passion to make Eve FW corps pay us to help them win.

Big problem for everyone.

Or it could be we have different ideas for FW battles. If FW battles and those for control of SOV were identical in all aspects it would be a bit redundant. We want them both to offer something different and to be different than the instant battles. More on this soon.

So you are kinda giving confirmation that FW battles and player owned districts in low-sec are two very different things right ?I wasnt there when the thread started but i had a few thoughts on how it could end up working based on the CSM minutes and the recent interviews and other podcasts.

FW fights : Opened to both corps and blueberries according to last CAST 514 with Null and Praetorian.This obviously implies a change in how the whole system works as randoms can't possibly pay 10 Mil to accept a contract. Or a corp that decides to pay a 10 Mil collateral to try and get a specific district will probably not like the idea of seeing blueberries get in the fight on their side (i know i wouldnt like it.)

Also, having randoms being part of the FW fights means the Player Owned Districts (POD from now on) can't be tied to FW as i, and many other people i talked with, suspect.

So that leaves us with all the economics and mechanics question marks.

=> The way i see it : EVE side already has incentives to use mercs to fight in FW as it can help attacking\defending systems faster. Then, the profit comes from usual FW revenue. The main question is how to push players in diving into those fights as EVE corps wont be able to add any money to the mix to avoid massive flows of ISK being transfered from EVE to Dust that way.

So yeah, that pretty much leaves NPC ISK being added to the mix and with more interesting payouts that usual pub games.In the end, i'm picturing FW as an evolved pub game.

Eve dude sets contracts for districts for free (or with a fixed broker fee). Those appears in mercenary tabs and then it's randoms and or teams diving in and fighting for more money than a classic pub game. Then district goes into some kind of reinforced state to avoid constant switching from side to side.

POD fights: Like many people said. Would happen in other low-sec systems. Probably not all of those available to avoid corps owning too quickly a vast territory and to make sure that fights happens and actually have a meaning. The scale of how many PO planets are available will be critical on that matter as there aint enough corps with real capabilities to own all of it and maintain enough frictions so that fights happen. You all know that wars (good ol wars, not crazy assed wars) happen when there's only a few of something everybody wants. Either space, or ressources. Or both to make it worse.

Then comes a bunch of questions :- Revenue : probably a "get X amount of ISK in X time" for every district. "Get bonus Isk for owning the entire planet" etc...- Attacking\defending Mechanics : The main question there is regarding the first attack on a possible POD. Will it be "i saw it first, i got it" ? Will it require two corps to challenge each other so the POD can be owned the first time ?

Then, i guess it's pretty simple : - attack district- reinforced timer then battle opens- fight fight fight (or not if there aint no ennemies)- district (doesnt) switch- Goes into a longer reinforced timer so cannot be attacked again for a X amount of time.

The only part that should involve EVE on those POD fights in the first place are OB. Perhaps some PI bonuses regarding taxes or extraction rates for pilots of the alliance\corp but not much more. Then, when adding orbital artillery and other stuff in a later expansion, the interest for pilots that dont PI will rise. Pretty much like the vision of the 0.0 discussed in cast 514 where dusters are seen as a tool of war just like any other ship rather than another component of system SOV.

So yeah, i freakin can't wait to see that devblog !! Hurry up dudes, we're waiting !!

This suddenly announced lowsec SOV for Dust mercs seems like CCP deciding that FW was too broken for us to even participate in.

ie with the broken state of it Eve side, there isn't enough passion to make Eve FW corps pay us to help them win.

Big problem for everyone.

Or it could be we have different ideas for FW battles. If FW battles and those for control of SOV were identical in all aspects it would be a bit redundant. We want them both to offer something different and to be different than the instant battles. More on this soon.

So you are kinda giving confirmation that FW battles and player owned districts in low-sec are two very different things right ?I wasnt there when the thread started but i had a few thoughts on how it could end up working based on the CSM minutes and the recent interviews and other podcasts.

FW fights : Opened to both corps and blueberries according to last CAST 514 with Null and Praetorian.This obviously implies a change in how the whole system works as randoms can't possibly pay 10 Mil to accept a contract. Or a corp that decides to pay a 10 Mil collateral to try and get a specific district will probably not like the idea of seeing blueberries get in the fight on their side (i know i wouldnt like it.)

Also, having randoms being part of the FW fights means the Player Owned Districts (POD from now on) can't be tied to FW as i, and many other people i talked with, suspect.

So that leaves us with all the economics and mechanics question marks.

=> The way i see it : EVE side already has incentives to use mercs to fight in FW as it can help attacking\defending systems faster. Then, the profit comes from usual FW revenue. The main question is how to push players in diving into those fights as EVE corps wont be able to add any money to the mix to avoid massive flows of ISK being transfered from EVE to Dust that way.

So yeah, that pretty much leaves NPC ISK being added to the mix and with more interesting payouts that usual pub games.In the end, i'm picturing FW as an evolved pub game.

Eve dude sets contracts for districts for free (or with a fixed broker fee). Those appears in mercenary tabs and then it's randoms and or teams diving in and fighting for more money than a classic pub game. Then district goes into some kind of reinforced state to avoid constant switching from side to side.

POD fights: Like many people said. Would happen in other low-sec systems. Probably not all of those available to avoid corps owning too quickly a vast territory and to make sure that fights happens and actually have a meaning. The scale of how many PO planets are available will be critical on that matter as there aint enough corps with real capabilities to own all of it and maintain enough frictions so that fights happen. You all know that wars (good ol wars, not crazy assed wars) happen when there's only a few of something everybody wants. Either space, or ressources. Or both to make it worse.

Then comes a bunch of questions :- Revenue : probably a "get X amount of ISK in X time" for every district. "Get bonus Isk for owning the entire planet" etc...- Attacking\defending Mechanics : The main question there is regarding the first attack on a possible POD. Will it be "i saw it first, i got it" ? Will it require two corps to challenge each other so the POD can be owned the first time ?

Then, i guess it's pretty simple : - attack district- reinforced timer then battle opens- fight fight fight (or not if there aint no ennemies)- district (doesnt) switch- Goes into a longer reinforced timer so cannot be attacked again for a X amount of time.

The only part that should involve EVE on those POD fights in the first place are OB. Perhaps some PI bonuses regarding taxes or extraction rates for pilots of the alliance\corp but not much more. Then, when adding orbital artillery and other stuff in a later expansion, the interest for pilots that dont PI will rise. Pretty much like the vision of the 0.0 discussed in cast 514 where dusters are seen as a tool of war just like any other ship rather than another component of system SOV.

So yeah, i freakin can't wait to see that devblog !! Hurry up dudes, we're waiting !!

This suddenly announced lowsec SOV for Dust mercs seems like CCP deciding that FW was too broken for us to even participate in.

ie with the broken state of it Eve side, there isn't enough passion to make Eve FW corps pay us to help them win.

Big problem for everyone.

Or it could be we have different ideas for FW battles. If FW battles and those for control of SOV were identical in all aspects it would be a bit redundant. We want them both to offer something different and to be different than the instant battles. More on this soon.

So you are kinda giving confirmation that FW battles and player owned districts in low-sec are two very different things right ?I wasnt there when the thread started but i had a few thoughts on how it could end up working based on the CSM minutes and the recent interviews and other podcasts.

FW fights : Opened to both corps and blueberries according to last CAST 514 with Null and Praetorian.This obviously implies a change in how the whole system works as randoms can't possibly pay 10 Mil to accept a contract. Or a corp that decides to pay a 10 Mil collateral to try and get a specific district will probably not like the idea of seeing blueberries get in the fight on their side (i know i wouldnt like it.)

Also, having randoms being part of the FW fights means the Player Owned Districts (POD from now on) can't be tied to FW as i, and many other people i talked with, suspect.

So that leaves us with all the economics and mechanics question marks.

=> The way i see it : EVE side already has incentives to use mercs to fight in FW as it can help attacking\defending systems faster. Then, the profit comes from usual FW revenue. The main question is how to push players in diving into those fights as EVE corps wont be able to add any money to the mix to avoid massive flows of ISK being transfered from EVE to Dust that way.

So yeah, that pretty much leaves NPC ISK being added to the mix and with more interesting payouts that usual pub games.In the end, i'm picturing FW as an evolved pub game.

Eve dude sets contracts for districts for free (or with a fixed broker fee). Those appears in mercenary tabs and then it's randoms and or teams diving in and fighting for more money than a classic pub game. Then district goes into some kind of reinforced state to avoid constant switching from side to side.

POD fights: Like many people said. Would happen in other low-sec systems. Probably not all of those available to avoid corps owning too quickly a vast territory and to make sure that fights happens and actually have a meaning. The scale of how many PO planets are available will be critical on that matter as there aint enough corps with real capabilities to own all of it and maintain enough frictions so that fights happen. You all know that wars (good ol wars, not crazy assed wars) happen when there's only a few of something everybody wants. Either space, or ressources. Or both to make it worse.

Then comes a bunch of questions :- Revenue : probably a "get X amount of ISK in X time" for every district. "Get bonus Isk for owning the entire planet" etc...- Attacking\defending Mechanics : The main question there is regarding the first attack on a possible POD. Will it be "i saw it first, i got it" ? Will it require two corps to challenge each other so the POD can be owned the first time ?

Then, i guess it's pretty simple : - attack district- reinforced timer then battle opens- fight fight fight (or not if there aint no ennemies)- district (doesnt) switch- Goes into a longer reinforced timer so cannot be attacked again for a X amount of time.

The only part that should involve EVE on those POD fights in the first place are OB. Perhaps some PI bonuses regarding taxes or extraction rates for pilots of the alliance\corp but not much more. Then, when adding orbital artillery and other stuff in a later expansion, the interest for pilots that dont PI will rise. Pretty much like the vision of the 0.0 discussed in cast 514 where dusters are seen as a tool of war just like any other ship rather than another component of system SOV.

So yeah, i freakin can't wait to see that devblog !! Hurry up dudes, we're waiting !!

... O_O

I may have talked to much... Back to work for me.

I know that feeling, Fox Four. Did it myself with a few info releases on the MechWarrior Living Legends forums while we were still developing.

Been reading this thread and really want to respond. First and foremost thank you for this thread. These types of discussions are really awesome and help us a lot.

You guys make a lot of really valid points about FW corporation battles; unfortunately, or fortunately depending how you look at it, they won't apply to FW battles much longer. One of the design goals we have right now when it comes to battles that are not the instant battles is that the corporation paying for the fight should be the ones owning the district and controlling who gets in.

I am not going to go into much detail here because I and CCP Nullabor are writing a dev blog on it, but I want you guys to know that we agree with a lot of what you have said and are working on a lot of improvements.

I will also note that your estimate for how much a planet should generate is pretty close to what I have listed in my documentation right here... No matter how much a district makes though, we want to encourage people to attack other districts because giant NAP fests are terrible.

No promise on when the dev blog will be out though.

Thanks for the response FoxFour. I feel a whole lot better now knowing that you guys have really thought this out. The Dust-EvE link needs to be so much more then mechanics.

Also we need to ability to transfer districts to other corps/alliances just like we do Custom Offices now in EvE.

Every mercs life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and died that distinguishes one from another

Mikramurka Shock Troop

Minmatar Republic

Fantastic discussion peeps. I luuuuuuv to see the game mechanics discussions spanning EVE/DUST and making it obvious that we are really talking about life in New Eden.

It sounds like our erstwhile devs and designers have plans for Faction Warfare, which is very good news.

What follows is not a critisism, but more a 'New Eden is always evolving' kind of argument.

FW was brought out as a response to the questions:

'How do we motivate peeps to get out of hisec, engage in pvp, and maybe use that experience as a springboard to end up out in nullsec, where tbh we have invested a disproportionate amount of devtime?' and 'What the hell do we do with losec?'.

It's had its successes and failures, it provides LP rewards, can have standings repercussions, provides small-group pvp, gets peeps into losec, etc. FW has seen a couple of passes and various tweaks, and it does serve a role in the game to a not-insignificant group of players.

Imo it fails because it is arbitrary. It is not tied in to any larger political picture(even though some nullsec alliances have a FW presence), doesn't have much of an influence on resource extraction/manufacturing/research etc. Atm, it is basically unconnected to hi and nullsec. It was a solution to a game-design problem, and not integrated into the bones of New Eden in any meaninful way.

I can go on about this at length, but will spare you all the wall of text.

The short and sweet version of my proposal for the cure to this is geopolitics. This means tangible strategic resources and structures and also intangible benefits to logistic considerations(eg. the transport of minerals between hi and losec is problematic atm). And these resources/benefits should tie into both the null and hisec game, resulting in a more integrated New Eden ripe for emergent behaviours.

Lastly, the ultimate value of taking these planets should be synergistic - mutual co-development of terrestrial(by Mercs) and orbital resources(by Pilots) should increase the benefits of planetery ownership/losec sov by a strategically valuable amount.